Verlaque sighed. “How do you know?”
“Ratched loves her books,” Rudder explained, his breathing raspy. “So I promised to find out a little bit about our mystery writer. My sources are infallible.”
“I’m sure,” Verlaque said. “But the last time we spoke, you pointed out the fact that Agathe’s body never washed up.”
“I was just thinking out loud,” Rudder said. “What I was going to suggest is that you look more at Les Loges—” He began to cough, and Verlaque could hear a shuffling noise and a woman’s voice. “My time’s up,” Rudder said, laughing and coughing at the same time. “Bad joke. Sorry.”
As they got closer to the bastide the sky became brighter, but the field of vision immediately in front of the car became impaired by smoke. Verlaque quickly filled Marine in on his conversation with Rudder, but she had understood most of it by listening to them. “Even if Agathe didn’t write the Petitjean books, she might still be alive,” she said. “There’s another woman to add to the list of suspects, also in her sixties or seventies.”
Verlaque looked at Marine. “Michèle Baudouin.”
“Yes. I’ve seen them together, and their relationship is beyond weird. A sort of love-hate thing, just like in the Petitjean book.”
“What’s in front of us now is more like Rebecca,” Verlaque said as he leaned toward the windshield, trying to see the road.
“Is this how the book ends?” Marine asked, quickly looking at him. “A fire?”
“Yes, Danvers goes up in flames.” They turned up the lane at the Pauliks’ farmhouse, stopping the car on the edge of the road about halfway to the bastide. “This is as close as I want to get,” Marine said, turning off the ignition.
“We can go on foot from here,” Verlaque said, already half out of the car. They got to the front terrace just as Bruno Paulik arrived, frantic.
“Léa’s in there!” Paulik shouted over the noise of sparks, the roaring fire, and distant sirens. His face was streaked with tears and sweat.
Verlaque took him by the elbows. “We can’t go in, Bruno!”
“Bruno, the firefighters are on their way!” Marine shouted. “Let them do their job.”
“Sod that!” Paulik hollered, throwing off Verlaque’s grip and making for the front door, where black smoke was billowing out. Tearing off his T-shirt and holding it up to his face as a mask, he disappeared inside.
“Bruno!” Hélène yelled as she arrived alongside Sandrine. “No!”
“The back door,” Sandrine said. “Let’s go and open it. The fire may not be at the back of the house yet.”
“The doorknob may be too hot to touch,” Verlaque yelled.
“The barbecue gloves,” Sandrine called back. “I’ll get them and meet you back there!”
Valère Barbier arrived, out of breath, his hands on his knees to steady himself. “M Barbier,” Marine said, going to him. “You need to sit down.”
“I could never sit down,” he replied, looking up at the house with tears in his eyes. “If Léa’s in there—”
“She may not be,” Marine replied.
“But Léa came back to the house to get a photograph she had forgotten,” Valère said. “She obviously caught this woman in the act, working out her fright antics.”
“Who do you mean, Valère?” Marine whispered.
“The blind lady—”
“You know about her?”
“Bruno just told me that the blind woman,” Valère began, his voice shaking, “who’s been living in the village . . . is behind all of this . . .”
The sirens got unbearably loud, then abruptly stopped, as two fire engines pulled up. “She must have chased Léa,” he went on, seeming not to notice the trucks and the firefighters who were unrolling their hoses.
“Léa may have gotten away,” Marine offered, her arm around the writer’s shoulders.
Valère shrugged off Marine’s arm. “Agathe!” he cried, looking up at the house. “Agathe!”
“Are there people inside?” the fire captain asked Verlaque as he got to the terrace.
“Possibly three,” Verlaque replied, looking over at his wife. Was Agathe Barbier in the house? “Bruno Paulik, the police commissioner, has just gone in. His eleven-year-old daughter may be inside. And a woman . . . in her sixties.”
The firefighters began to spray water into the windows, and two, in full gear, walked into the house wearing oxygen masks. “They’ll find them,” Marine said, consoling Valère.
Sandrine came back, panting. “The back door was wide open,” she said. “I can’t stand here and watch. I’m leaving. Good thing I have my keys in my pocket!”
“What?” Valère yelled. “Now?” She ran toward the carport, and seconds later they could hear Clochette whizzing down the driveway. “She’s so unstable,” Valère said, shaking his head.
“We all react to situations differently,” Marine said, looking up at the blazing house and saying the Lord’s Prayer in her head.
Verlaque yelled as the two firefighters came out of the house, supporting Bruno Paulik in their arms, an oxygen mask covering his face. “Is he okay?” Verlaque asked.
They laid Bruno on the ground. The younger one replied, “We found him at the top of the stairs, passed out.”
“He was trying to get to the attic,” Verlaque explained. “His daughter likes to play up there.”
“Let’s go,” his partner said, and they went back into the house.
“Five minutes,” their captain shouted. “The roof may collapse any minute.”
Hélène came back and fell beside her husband. “He’ll be all right,” Verlaque said, kneeling beside her. “They’ve gone back in to find Léa.”
Two minutes later the firefighters emerged, empty-handed, tearing off their masks. “We couldn’t make it to the attic,” one of them said.
Hélène sobbed, bent over, grabbing at the pebbles with her hands and dragging them across the terrace. Her body heaved. “My baby!” she screamed, her body writhing. She got up to run into the house, and Verlaque grabbed her.
“Hélène, she might not be in there,” he said, holding her in his arms.
“We need to get farther back,” the captain explained. “The roof is dangerously close to collapsing.” As if it heard him, a rumbling noise roared through the house, accompanied by sparks and the sound of falling timbers.
